Standing By The Daisies
by wowsugarpuss
Summary: Joan waits for Adam.


Sometimes she would wait for him at the corner. Hooking her heels around the fence post and letting her weight fall onto it for precarious moments in between her darting glances. He never came, but she would continue to stand alone in the slightly unkempt grass that was grown too close to the upright splint to be cut. It did not make her sad to wait alone for someone who never arrived, she thought it should, but the fact that she had not yet given up was enough to keep her spirits raised. Their flag was at half-mast, but it had not yet fallen to the ground and she cherished that fact like a twisted piece of metal that he might have carefully contorted for her.

She took this time, standing with the daisies, to speculate on what the plan really was. The point of all the twists and turns and why, no matter how much she tried, she could not be bitter about her sudden fall in Adam's esteem. There was a purpose for this, and she was only slightly less than happy to wait it out. Her illness, and the solitude that it had caused her as she recovered slowly, had taught her that you cannot control everything. You control very little, and it's much more productive to just wait for things to come around to your own way than to try and change them prematurely.

By this time summer was slowly seeping into autumn and the grass became harsher against her legs, the soft, cotton skirts of her time by the corner were being out-grown by her lengthening limbs and the creeping cold of the season. But still she waited.

Cotton was turning into wool.

She was not a patient person naturally, and when the white wash of the fence began to bubble and crack she decided that she had been idle long enough. That there was no purpose and maybe, maybe she really was seeing things that other people could not, because those things were just not there. She cried a little that day.

He requested that she re-paint the fence, so she did, despite herself.

The white stuck under her nails for a week, and every time she waited by the corner she would pick away at it, tiny flakes falling to the ground with pieces of her optimism. Her mother began to wonder where she was going to everyday after school, why she was so late home. Joan made sure to walk around the smokers so that her mother could not accuse her of anything terrible by sniffing her shirts when they were put through to the wash. Her illness and its medication were no longer making good enough excuses.

It was too cold to stand still for long periods of time now, and she was tiring of the splinters that she got from clinging to the fence—rotting wood plying its way into her fingers with malicious intent. Holding onto her hope hurt, red raw and cracked, but she refused to let go of the post on the corner, standing in the daisies that were long dead by now.

Her spot was now decorated from her presence, a permanent reminder of her protest, her offer: bent-back grass where her pumps had asserted their presence on the ground, bare wood from itching fingernails and dead petals from "he loves me".

Then he stopped.

She was staring out over the familiar expanse before her, absently lost in the conversation inside her head, when he took two steps towards her. Then two more. In a pattern like he had planned this out in a logical fashion, pushing down the dry daisies with his determination, except, that he seemed unconvinced of his own movements, and completely without purpose or fortitude. She did not notice him until his hand came down upon the fence, gently, as if he was scared to break into her domain.

She turned to face him, setting her mouth into a hopeful, if not wary, smile. It seemed as if she had fallen asleep against her fence, for she had never thought that one of the days she stood there waiting he would actually join her.

"Why do you stand here every day?" he questioned dully.

"I was just waiting for you, uh, we arranged to meet here, remember?" she replied awkwardly with an enthusiasm she didn't feel.

"That was three months ago, Joan," he said with little heard venom, "and you flaked, then went postal."

"I know."

"Then why?" he squinted.

"I'm sorry?" she offered with a wince.

There was a long pause as he considered her, his eyes searching out for some remainder of 'them'.

"It's too cold to stand outside, Jane," he said with disappointment lacing up his words.

"Okay," she swallowed.

He granted her a polite half smile and she remembered that "nice is what you get from a stranger", smiling sadly to herself as a thick tear poured itself slowly down her cheek.

Her lips pressed firmly together, jaw clenched to prevent any of the quiet sobs that pushed against her lungs. And she turned back to her fence, leaning on its shoulder. Drawing whatever comfort she could from the worn out wood.

When she was sure he could not see her, hear her, she let her chest open up and rained on the daisies: crying for everyone and everything that had ever existed in the world. Just as long as she was not crying for the boy who left.

She cried until her eyes became raw like her hands, then letting her frame flop gracelessly onto the ground she began to pick up the pieces of her heart from between the dying daisies.


End file.
